November 2nd is the 21st anniversary of the Vermont Environmental Court, the only such specialist court in the United States. Thus, the timing was right for a UCL seminar the previous night organised by the UK Environmental Law Association and the Centre for Law and the Environment at which Judge Merideth Wright, the first judge at the Vermont court, gave an account of its workings to an audience of British lawyers and LLM students.

The UCL event was chaired by Lord Justice Carnwath, Senior President of Tribunals in this country. Judge Wright’s talk was especially timely because a specialist environmental tribunal is now in the process of being established in England and Wales. Its initial jurisdictions will be to hear appeals against new forms of civil penalties being introduced into environmental law, but its functions may well extend in future to cover other areas of environmental regulation such as appeals against refusal of a waste management licences.

Judge Wright’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion involving Mr Justice Keith Lindblom;  Nick Warren, President General Regulatory Chamber and Professor Richard Macrory QC of UCL,  author of a recent report on strengthening the new environmental tribunal. It became increasingly clear during the seminar that, despite the very different legal systems, there were extremely valuable lessons to be learnt from the Vermont experience at a critical time in thinking about new UK institutional arrangements for handling environmental law.

On 23 November, The Centre for Law and the Environment and UCL Public Policy held an event exploring the governance of the technologies in moving to a low carbon economy. Chiara Armeni and Maria Lee from the Faculty of Laws spoke at the event, chaired by Yvonne Rydin (UCL Bartlett and Environment Institute), along with UCL colleagues Simon Lock (Science and Technology Studies) and Tadj Oreszczyn (Energy Institute).

Technological innovation is expected to play a significant role in moving to a low carbon economy. Alongside the technological and scientific challenges, this presents considerable challenges of governance. The speakers and audience explored the complex governance challenges associated with capturing the carbon savings potential of technological innovation, as well as the ways in which publics might engage with climate change technologies. Any technology is embedded in its social context, and the public in their diverse roles (as citizens, consumers, members of communities) play unavoidable and important roles in the adoption, proliferation and impact of climate change technologies.

Dr Angel-Manuel Moreno will be visiting the Centre for Law and the Environment over the next few months. Dr. Moreno works as a Professor of Public Law at Carlos III University of Madrid, where he teaches Administrative and Environmental Law, both at the domestic and at the EU level, fields in which he has published several academic contributions. His present research focuses on the EU regulation on chemicals and on the legal framework for environmental liability in a comparative perspective.

Dr Neil Gunningham of the Australian National University will be visiting the Centre for Law and the Environment over the next few weeks. Dr Gunningham is the Director of the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research in Canberra Australia. His research has included work on the application of innovative, private sector mechanisms for improving health, safety and environmental regulation with particular reference to the mining industry, he has also been invovled in work on the dynamics of climate change negotiations.

On the 15-16 March the Carbon Capture Legal Programme, in association with New York University School of Law and sponsored by the the Global CCS Institute, held a Global Symposium on CCS at New York University. Professor Richard Macrory, Director of the CCLP, and Professor Richard Stewart from NYU School of Law, Guarini Center on Environmental and Land Use Law, discuss the legal and policy issues raised by the event on a podcast recorded by New York University. The podcast can be accessed at this link:

Richard Stewart and Richard Macrory discuss the Global Legal Symposium on CCS